It’s a complicated world at the moment for communicators working out how to activate the potential of AI for themselves and their customers. And they realize they are unlikely to be able to do this all on their own.
There were so many takeaways from yesterday’s PRWeek Crisis Comms Conference in Washington, DC, which you can see here and listen to here. But one consistent topic from the stage and in conversation that particularly struck me pertained to the role of AI technology providers in constructing useful tools for communicators, especially in crisis situations.
Some tech providers adopt a catholic approach, welcoming all-comers and selling their services to pretty much anybody who is interested in buying. This approach is particularly good if you are an established tech giant with the heft to invest significant sums in new AI offerings and the financial security to invest for the long term.
Some PR firms are teaming up with leaner, up-and-coming tech providers on a partnership basis to roll out services, such as BCW and Limbik on the WPP firm’s Decipher offering, and Weber Shandwick and Blackbird.ai.
The Limbik-powered Decipher product uses cognitive AI to evaluate and predict the impact of various themes with broad social, political and organizational implications. Blackbird.ai worked with Weber to produce a Media Security Center to help clients navigate volatile political environments.
These partnerships revolve around agreements of certain lengths, some with exclusivity clauses, others more general. Each deal has advantages for both parties.
For agencies, they can get into a business they aren’t necessarily familiar with and build offerings in a protected environment without having to start from scratch and invest significant sums in technology that might not be fit for purpose in a couple of years.
For the tech companies, they can add blue-chip names to their client list and get guaranteed business on their books that spans a number of years, especially useful if you’re a start-up or young company, or you have private equity or VCs closely monitoring your progress.
In-house PR functions will work directly with tech companies or work via their agencies to produce tailored services that meet their needs, or a mixture of both.
We’ll see a variety of approaches outlined in our upcoming Agency Business Report, the most in-depth deep dive into the PR agency sector that exists.
But as markets evolve and the AI landscape moves firmly into the “doing” from the “experimenting” stage, priorities, focuses and realities for all three parties will change quickly.
An agency might realize that the service it carefully created with its tech partner no longer meets 100% of the needs that clients are asking for and they need to look elsewhere for tech support. In-house teams might reflect that they need to take the whole AI tech stack operation in-house.
For their part, tech companies that are now more established might rue the day they signed an exclusive relationship with one agency or organization that precludes them from taking on lucrative client relationships elsewhere in the expanding marketplace.
Where it gets complicated is when an agency has produced a neat product to take to market via an arrangement with a tech vendor but that exclusive partnership deal comes to an end. What happens then?
There will be many such situations in an AI sector that is evolving at the speed of sound. There will be acquisitions, consolidation, fallings out, successful must-have service offerings and much more.
We’ll be diving deep into this in a unique conference we’ll be establishing later this year, so look out for that and join in the conversation with us.
